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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE QUESTION OF THE DAY 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE 



FOR WHAT OBJECT WAS IT WRITTEN 



HOW IT IS TO BE READ 



r BY 

THOMAS RICHEY, D.D. 

Professor of Ecclesiastical History, General Theological Seminary 




NEW YORK 
JAMES POTT, CHURCH PUBLISHER 

12 Astor Place 

1883 






Copyright, 1882, 
By JAMES POTT. 



PRESS OF i. J. LITTLE & CO., 
NOS. 10 TO 20 ASTOR PLACE, NEW YORK. 



I. 

WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 



I. 

WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 




*|HE Bible, as the title indicates, is the 
book of books. Most true ! And yet 
the answer is not altogether satisfactory. Its 
superiority granted, the question still remains, 
H ow does the Bible differ from all other books ? 
And to this it is not enough to say, the Bible 
is a revelation of God from heaven. For Nat- 
ure, too, is God's book. How, then, we are 
constrained to ask, does the revelation of God 
in the Bible differ from the revelation which 
God makes of Himself in the book of Nat- 
ure ? To this the Bible itself furnishes, I 
think, a satisfactory answer (Ps. xix), — 

7 



8 THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 

" The heavens are declaring the glory of God, 

and the firmament is shewing His handy- 
work ; 
day to day poureth forth speech, 

and night to night breatheth forth knowledge, 
no speech is there, there are no words, 

all inaudible is their voice : — 
their line goeth forth into all lands, 

and their signs to the world's end, 
where He has fixed for the sun a tent : 

And He steppeth forth as a bridegroom from His 

chamber, 
and rejoiceth as a mighty man to run His 
course ; 
from the uttermost part of the heaven He has His 
rising, 
and His circuit to the end of it again ; 
and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof. M 

From this manifestation of God in Nature, 
(where it will be observed the name of 
God — El — occurs only once), the Psalmist 
passes on in the second part of the Psalm 
to praise God for His more perfect revela- 
tion of Himself in the Law : — 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? g 

" The law of the Lord is perfect — restoring the soul ; 
the testimony of the Lord is faithful — making wise 
the simple : 
the precepts of the Lord are right — rejoicing the heart ; 
the commandment of the Lord is pure — enlight- 
ening the eyes : 
the fear of the Lord is clean — enduring forever ; 

the judgments of the Lord are truth — they are 
righteous altogether: 
More to be desired are they than gold or much fine gold ; 
and sweeter than honey, or the droppings of the 
comb : 
moreover by them is Thy servant warned ; 
in keeping them there is great reward." 

Here, it will be noted, the name Yahveh 
occurs seven times ; the number and the 
change of name indicating that it is no longer 
God as the Divine Governor of the world 
which is the subject of consideration, but the 
Covenant God of Israel in His special work 
of Redemption. 

It is beyond all question, then, that the 
Bible at the first was given to the Jews, and 
was placed as a precious deposit in their keep- 



IO THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 

ing. It is also beyond all question that the 
New Testament Scriptures were written more 
especially for the Christian Church, and to- 
gether with the Old were handed down by it 
from generation to generation. It is also be- 
yond all question that both the Jewish and the 
Christian Churches were of the opinion that 
in the Scriptures so handed down they had a 
certified record of God's dealings with the 
Church and people from the beginning to the 
end of time, and were accustomed to have 
recourse to the Bible accordingly.* These are 
the simple facts of the case. Now let us see 
what may fairly be deduced from them. It 
is clear then, as a matter of fact, that the 

* For what is the matter of the Bible but those acts and 
words of God in which He has opened His very heart, and dis- 
closed to us His purposes of salvation — that whole great, glorious 
history in which His thoughts of love have been revealed and ful- 
filled ?• For the Bible is no mere collection of maxims, and precepts, 
or religious truths, but that great history of salvation which, com- 
mencing with the first beginning of the race, was continued through 
the times of the patriarchs and prophets, culminated in Jesus 
Christ and the events of His death and resurrection, and will be 
completed in that future world which is promised to us." — Luthardt. 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? II 

Bible, at the first, was not given into the pos- 
session of the world at large, but was in- 
tended for the exclusive use of a peculiar 
people. Whether or not this was to be the 
case for all time is another question ; and 
has nothing to do with the facts of the case 
as they present themselves before us just 
now for consideration. The Bible, it is to be 
feared, has suffered as much from the un- 
warranted claims put forth for it by its 
friends as it has from the slights which from 
time to time are attempted to be put upon 
it by its enemies. When it is claimed, for 
example, that, because the Bible is from 
God, it must be intended to teach everybody 
everything — this is to put abstract speculation 
in the place of historical fact, and to ignore 
the limitations which the distinctive character 
of the revelation of necessity imposes upon 
it. It is just as bad to make too much of the 
Bible as it is to make too little of it. The 
Bible is not an encyclopedia of universal 



12 THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 

knowledge, nor was it ever intended to be. 
It is true that the Bible is a revelation from 
heaven ; but it is not true that it is the only 
revelation from heaven. God reveals Him- 
self, as has been said, in one way in Nature 
and the Conscience : in another way, in the 
Bible and the Church. The Bible does not 
take the place of the Conscience : it corrects, 
it may be, and supplements it : nor does the 
Church, to whose existence from the begin- 
ning the Bible bears testimony, take the 
place of Nature, and the powers to whom 
God has given authority therein. Here, as 
elsewhere, we have the testimony, not of one, 
but of two or three witnesses.* 

Again, there are people who will insist upon 

* "When we extol the complete sufficiency of the entire body of 
the Scripture," says Hooker, "it must be understood with this 
caution, that the benefit of nature's light be not thought excluded 
as unnecessary, because the necessity of a diviner light is magni- 
fied. It sufficeth, therefore, that Nature and Scripture do serve in 
such full sort that they both conjointly and not severally either of 
them be so complete, that unto everlasting felicity we need not 
the knowledge of anything more than these two may easily furnish 
our minds with on all sides." 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 



13 



going to the Bible with all manner of hard 
questions, and are disappointed if they do not 
find the solution of their questions there. 
Now this again is to expect more from the 
Bible than it was ever intended to fulfill. The 
Bible addresses itself primarily to faith, not to 
reason. It does not solve hard questions, for 
the reason that the people for whom it was 
more especially written are not of the kind 
supposed to entertain such questions. If 
people will have their doubts and difficulties 
set at rest, they must go elsewhere than to 
the Bible. The Bible is the certified record 
of Gods dealings with His Church and peo- 
ple. It was written accordingly for the in- 
struction and education of faith, not to answer 
hard questions. The case of Pharaoh, over 
which people sometimes puzzle themselves, is 
a case in point. It is something for faith to 
know that the evil as well as the good is in 
the hands of God. Evil angels and bad men, 
while permitted to do harm and work mis- 



14 THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 

chief for a time, will in the end be made to 
do God's bidding. As to the Ethical ques- 
tions involved, the Bible itself gives no an- 
swer to them. It is the function of Philoso- 
phy to reconcile the sovereignty of God with 
the free agency of man, not of a guide to 
faith and a book written for the edification 
of God's own Church and people. If people 
will insist upon an answer to their questions, 
and will find fault with the Bible for not fur- 
nishing them with what they ask, they are 
simply unreasonable and their extravagance 
is not to be charged as a fault to the dispar- 
aging of a book expressly written, as has 
been said, to aid faith, and not to gratify 
reason. 

Then there are a class of people who 
find fault with the Bible because it does not 
speak in technical language, and is in mani- 
fest contradiction to the discoveries of sci- 
ence, they say. They might just as well 
find fault with the world they live in, and 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 1 5 

criticise the way God has chosen to reveal 
Himself in nature. The world, as it appears 
to us to be, is in flat contradiction to the world 
which men of science will insist upon our 
thinking it to be. We talk of the sun's rising 
and setting, notwithstanding it is not the 
sun which moves around the earth, but it is 
the earth which moves round the sun. 
Strange to say, men of science every day use 
language which they themselves declare is in 
open contradiction to what they know and 
teach. But what if the phenomenal world 
has its own story to tell as well as the 
maze of fixed laws in which science delights 
to revel ? The fair beauty of the world, 
as reflected in sun, moon and stars, and 
painted by the Divine Artist in glory upon 
the sky, it is to be believed, has its 
own mission, and is not altogether with- 
out a purpose. May it not be that to the 
great mass of men, the beauty of nature as 
seen by the eye, or as distilled by music into 



1 6 THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 

the ear, has an evidential value quite as 
powerful in its way as the order of nat- 
ure and the hidden harmony of its laws ? 
May it not be that the emotions kindled in 
the heart of the savage, as he stands awe- 
stricken in the presence of the Power which 
speaks to him in the voice of the thunder 
or the roar of the ocean, are of equal 
moral and spiritual value with the intellect- 
ual pleasure which fills the mind of the 
scientist when he contemplates the order 
and arrangement which pervade the whole 
system of nature ? What if the belief which 
rises spontaneously at the sight of the 
beauty of the world, and breaks out in 
hymns of adoring gratitude and songs of 
unending praise be intended to counter- 
work the unbelief which the spirit of inquiry 
fosters, and the doubts* suggested by the 

* See Canon Mosley's sermon upon " Nature ": " It is thus that 
the admiration of the beauty of nature strikes a sort of balance 
with the scientific analysis of nature in the general effect upon 
the religious mind of an age. The tendency of the analysis of 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? lj 

development of the critical faculties. Be 
this as it may, the Bible follows the course 
of nature in speaking to man through the 
medium of phenomenal and every-day lan- 
guage, and does not make use of exact or 
of scientific speech. Nay, more, as it was 
the calling of the Jew to keep alive in the 
world the knowledge of the one living and 
true God in opposition to the idolatry of the 
powers of nature, the Bible always and every- 

nature is to reduce the idea of the Deity in men's minds to a nega- 
tion, and to convert the First Great Cause into a mere physical 
force. But the admiration of nature as a creation of beauty, on 
the other hand, tends to support the moral idea of the Deity, to 
excite a curiosity and interest about His character, and so far to 
sustain the mystery of the Gospel disclosure of His character. 
One and the same age has developed in a signal manner both of 
these principles ; two influences have gone forth from it, and the 
physical idea of nature from analysis, and the mystical and imag- 
inative idea from the picture have contended within its bosom, 
and sometimes within the same minds. The impression from the 
visible world, as a chain of material causation, has been more or 
less counteracted and counterbalanced by the visible world as a 
spiritual sight. A spiritual fact ever before us is a spiritual me- 
mento; and beauty is a spiritual fact, because it altogether hinges 
upon a spiritual principle within us, and only exists as an address 
to it. And so we generally find that no one set of ideas is al- 
lowed to domineer and monopolize ground in any age, but, when 
one rises to power, another is provided to meet and check it." 



1 8 THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 

where speaks of God as present and acting, 
without regard to the laws of nature, or the 
teachings of science. It is for Reason to 
discover the ways of God in nature and 
history ; it is for Faith to trace the dealings 
of God with His own elect Church and 
people. The one is not in opposition to the 
other any more than it is to pray to God as 
the Giver and Bestower of all things, to 
"give us this day our daily bread," while 
we bend ourselves, notwithstanding, to toil, 
knowing that if a man will not labor he has 
no right to expect to eat. Faith views the 
world on its supernatural side ; science, on its 
natural side ; sight, on its phenomenal side. 
There is a language of faith, just as there is 
a language of science ; and there is a common 
speech which interprets the world as mere 
phenomena. The truth of the language in 
every case depends upon the point of view 
from which, at the time of speaking or writ- 
ing, we are looking at the world and all that 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? Ig 

is therein. Between the different points of 
view there is no necessary contradiction. 
There is no contradiction, except when fools 
and pedants will insist upon it that their own 
point of view is the only point of view, and 
will compel everybody to look at things 
through their spectacles. Men of science in 
this respect have been as much at fault as 
theologians ; and worse than all is the irra- 
tional crowd which will believe nothing 
except what it sees with its eyes. There is 
no real conflict to-day — there never has been 
any — between the Bible and science; between 
the natural and the supernatural ; between 
faith and reason. The conflict, if there be 
any, is between belief and unbelief; and 
when it reaches that point, neither the reve- 
lation of God in nature, nor the revelation of 
God in the Bible, is of any avail to convince 
the gainsayer.* 

* "The question concerning the origin of matter, leaving the 
region of sensible reality, passes into that of speculation or of faith. 
At this point, then, natural science ceases to be natural science, and 



20 THE QUESTION- OF THE DAY. 

It is a matter of complaint on the part of 
purists, as well as of those who affect a high 
tone in morals, that there are things in the 
Bible which are not to be found in ordinary 
books upon moral culture. Possibly ! The 
Bible deals with moral science, just as it deals 
with physical science. It does not treat of 
the science of Ethics, but has to do with the 
facts on which morals as a science rest ; its 
arrangement is not scientific but historical ; 
not formal, but economical. It was neces- 
sary, in accordance with the plan which God 
in redemption had in view, that the whole 
mystery of sin and evil should be allowed to 

becomes either philosophy or religion. Whether we admit matter 
to have been created by God, or look upon it as self-existent and 
eternal, or whether we do not concern ourselves with it at all, is a 
matter of equal indifference as far as natural science, which starts 
from the existence of material being, is concerned. Hence, in this 
question, there neither is nor can be any conflict between science 
and faith. If a conflict does take place, it is one between two 
opposite views of the world, which are both as views originally ac- 
cepted from other sources. Matters of faith, whether that faith be 
a religious or a philosophical one ; what seem at first a conflict with 
science, is rather a conflict with the philosophy which her votaries 
accept. " — Luthardt.) 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 21 

reveal itself, before the remedy provided 
could be applied. There are ugly things in 
the Bible just as there are filthy and disgust- 
ing creatures in nature. There are typical 
bad men in Holy Scripture just as there are 
typical good men. The Bible has not only 
to do with Christ, but with Ante-Christ also. 
Abel has his Cain ; Jacob, his Esau ; Isaac, his 
Ishmael ; Elijah, his Balaam ; David, his Saul. 
The mystery of evil is permitted to reveal 
itself along with the mystery of redemption. 
Nor are the good men of the Bible ideal char- 
acters. They have their faults, which are, for 
the most part, the exaggeration of their vir- 
tues. And their virtues, at the last, are won 
by the overcoming of their faults. The 
moral law, as it is revealed in the Bible, is 
not an abstract code of ethics, or, as some 
will have it, a re-declaration of the law of 
Nature. Sin was first allowed to reveal itself ; 
then the law was given to correct it. The 
first commandment bears witness against 



22 THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 

the idolatry of Israel in Egypt ; the pres- 
ence of which it speaks is the presence 
revealed in the Tabernacle, not the Great 
Spirit which the Indian bows down to and 
worships. The Sabbath is to be kept, not as 
a nature-festival, but as a memorial of re- 
demption. 

The Bible, then, is a book sui generis. It 
is not an encyclopedia of universal knowl- 
edge ; nor is it given to serve the place of a 
book of puzzles ; nor is it a scientific treat- 
ment of moral and physical questions. It 
was written for a peculiar people ; it was 
given for a special purpose. It is but fair in 
judging of it, to look at it from the point of 
view from which the writers regard the sub- 
jects of which they treat.* The Bible is not to 

* Although the Scripture of God, therefore, be stored with infi- 
nite variety of matter of all kinds, although it abound with all 
sorts of laws, yet the principal intent of Scripture is to deliver the 
laws of duties supernatural. . . The testimonies of God are true, 
the testimonies of God are perfect, the testimonies of God are all- 
sufficient for that end for which they were given. Therefore, ac- 
cordingly, we do receive them. We do not think that in them God 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 2$ 

be blamed for not throwing light on things 
with which it has nothing at all properly to 
do. A bird's-eye view of the contents will 
make all this abundantly plain. Take, first 
of all, the Pentateuch, or five books of Moses. 
"The entire work," says Professor Kiel, 
" though divided into five parts, forms, both 
in plan and execution, one complete and 
carefully contrasted whole, commencing with 
the creation, and reaching to the death of 
Moses, the mediator of the old covenant. 
The foundation for the Divine plan was really 
laid in and along with the creation of the 
world. The world which God created is the 
scene of a history embracing both God and 
man, the site for the kingdom of God in its 
temporal and earthly form. All that theyfr^ 
book contains with reference to the early 

hath omitted anything needful to His purpose, and left His intent 
to be accomplished by our devisings. What the Scripture pur- 
poseth, the same in all points it doth perform. Howbeit that we 
swerve not in judgment, one thing especially we must observe, 
namely, that the absolute perfection of Scripture is seen by rela- 
tion to that end whereto it tendeth." — Hooker. 



24 THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 

history of the human race, from Adam to the 
patriarchs of Israel, stands in a more or less 
relation to the kingdom of God in Israel, of 
which the other books describe the actual 
establishment. The second depicts the in- 
auguration of the kingdom of Sinai. Of the 
third and fourth, the former narrates the 
spiritual, the latter the political organization 
of the kingdom of God by facts and moral 
precepts. The fifth recapitulates the whole 
in a hortatory strain, embracing both his- 
tory and legislation, and impresses it upon 
the hearts of the people, for the purpose 
of arousing true fidelity to the covenant, 
and securing its lasting duration. ,, It is a 
puzzle to many readers of the Bible why the 
books which contain the further history of the 
people of God from the death of Moses to 
the Babylonish captivity,viz., Joshua, Judges, 
i and 2 Samuel, i and 2 Kings, are reckoned 
among the prophetical books. The Jews 
called these books the Prophetae ftrzores. 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 25 

They did so because the period covered by 
these books is regarded not from an his- 
torical, but from a prophetical point of 
view. The writers treat the subject not 
after the manner of annalists, but with a view 
to the instruction and edification of the 
Church. It is the prophetical element, as in 
the review which Moses makes of the early 
history of God's people in the book of Deuter- 
onomy, which is of real value in these histor- 
ical books, not the order of events regarded as 
mere facts of history. So also with the later 
prophets (^prophetae posterior ei) Isaiah, Jer- 
emiah, Ezekiel, the twelve minor prophets ; 
they are not mere predictions of future 
events, but " contain the progressive testi- 
mony to the council of God, delivered in 
connection with the acts of God, during the 
gradual decay of the Old Testament king- 
dom." It is, again, a puzzle to many why 
the Book of Ruth in the Jewish arrangement 
of the Canon should be torn away from its 



26 THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 

historical relationship as an appendix to the 
Book of Judges, and placed among the Hag- 
iographa or holy writings with the Song of 
Solomon and the Lamentations of Jeremiah. 
But the answer is not hard to find. It is the 
mystical element in the book, connected 
with the introduction of a Moabitess into 
the Church and kingdom of God which gives 
it its place in the Canon of Scripture. Noth- 
ing could be further from the spirit of Jew- 
ish exclusiveness than such a thought. It 
looked forward to the introduction of an en- 
tire foreign element into the Church and 
kingdom of God which was to find its ulti- 
mate realization in the ingathering of the 
Gentiles. There could be no greater evidence 
of an overruling hand in the arrangement 
of the Old Testament Canon than that a book 
containing the evidence of such a fact should 
find a place in the Jewish Scriptures. It is 
the same mystical element which gives to the 
Song of Solomon its place in the Hagiogra- 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 2J 

pha. It is not a mere love song, as the pro- 
fane mockers of whom the Psalmist speaks 
will have it to be. The little sister of the 
bride that is " black but comely," foreshadows 
an alliance with the outlying world of sinners 
among the Gentiles, and marks with festive 
rejoicing (as the return of the prodigal in St. 
Luke's Gospel in the New Testament) the 
introduction of an entirely foreign element 
into the Church of God.* Men may scoff 

* " If the Shulamite represents Israel — the typical Israel — her 
sister not yet grown up can only represent that part of mankind 
which is not yet fitted to undergo the trial to which this nation was 
the first to be submitted, — heathen mankind, therefore. The reader 
will perhaps ask himself whether the eyes of the ancient poet could 
pierce so far into the future. But does not Solomon himself, when 
he is inaugurating the Temple, and dedicating that building to 
Jehovah as His dwelling-place in Israel, expressly set apart a place 
for the Gentiles in this House. Does he not ask that their prayers 
also may be heard ? ' ' Moreover, concerning a stranger, that is not 
of thy people Israel, but cometh out of a far country for thy name's 
sake (for they shall hear of thy great name, and of thy strong 
hand, and of thy stretched out-arm); when he shall come and pray 
toward this house ; hear thou in heaven, thy dwelling-place, and 
do according to all that the stranger calleth to thee for : that all 
people of the earth may know thy name, to fear thee, as do thy 
people Israel." 

" Did not Solomon at the summit of his glory, see a representa- 



28 THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 

at the idea of a prophet like Hosea, taking 
to himself a " wife of whoredom, and chil- 
dren of whoredom/' but their scoffing only 
betrays the ignorance of what Holy Script- 
ures in such a case really means to teach, 
and of their inability to appreciate the fore- 
shadowing of the mystery of the union of 
Divinity with fallen, outcast humanity in the 
person of the eternal Son of God.* It is the 
old Pharisaic cant about eating and drinking 
with publicans and sinners. God help the 
world, if it is to be given over to the tender 
mercies of Puritans and unbelievers. Satan 



tive of this Gentile world, a foreign queen, arrive at Jerusalem, at- 
tracted not by the fame of his name only, but also by that of the 
name of Jehovah, whose appearance may well have contributed to 
awaken in the poet's mind the idea of this personification of pagan 
humanity in the young sister of the Shulamite ? The Gentiles will 
one day have to decide on their destiny, as Israel is now called to 
decide on its own. They, too, will have to choose between the 
visions of a false glory, and the happiness enjoyed in the love of 
God ; between the Messiah crowned with gold, and the Messiah 
whose hair is wet with the dews of night or even whose head is 
crowned with thorns." — Godet. 

* See Aubertein on Daniel and the Revelation, (p. 279) for an 
admirable treatment of this whole subject. 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 



2 9 



never plays a better role than when he turns 
reformer, and affects morality. 

When we turn to the New Testament, we 
can trace the same essential features of 
Divine Revelation prevailing throughout. 
The four Gospels are not narratives in the 
ordinary meaning of the word , nor are they 
what is commonly known as " inspired pro- 
ductions," as when men sit down to spin out 
of their own brain a book. The four Gos- 
pels, as Mr. Wescott in his very able intro- 
duction has conclusively proved, are the 
record of the oral teaching of the Apostles, 
as that teaching was arranged and modified 
to suit the exigencies and the varying needs 
of the Apostolic Church. The Gospels are 
not abstract and ideal productions ; they 
grew out of the felt needs of God's people, 
and were arranged accordingly. St. Matthew 
adapted his teaching to meet the wants 
of the Jewish communities. St. Mark, under 
the guidance of St. Peter, wrote his Gospel 



3<D THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 

of the kingdom for the Romans. St. Luke, 
with St. Paul for his master, wrote to vindi- 
cate the introduction of sinners into the 
kingdom, and to help the Gentile churches. 
St. John produced his spiritual Gospel to 
meet a more advanced stage of spiritual ex- 
perience ; and to bring out in connection 
with it the sacramental element bound up 
with the taking of humanity into union with 
the Godhead in the person of Christ. The 
inspiration which arranged and adjusted the 
facts of our Lord's life, and grouped and 
methodized His teaching, was not a verbal 
or a mechanical inspiration ; but part and 
parcel of that promised gift of the Comforter, 
Who, after their Lord's departure, was to 
remain with the disciples and bring to 
their " remembrance " all the things which 
He had said unto them, as the course of 
events, and the guidance of Divine Provi- 
dence, and their own ordinary experience, 
showed the apostles and their fellow-labor- 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 



31 



ers in the Lord, the things of Christ in a 
new light. The Holy Spirit taught them how 
to apply their growing experience for the 
edification of Christ's Church and people. 
There is nothing mechanical in all this ; no 
book-making ; no fine writing ; but, what is 
better far, a Christian realism and the work- 
ing of a Presence and a Power which is none 
other than Divine.* 

* Godet (" Studies on the New Testament") puts this admirably 
well : Four portraits of Himself. This is the whole of the legacy 
left by Jesus to His family on earth. But they are sufficient for 
its needs, because by the contemplation of these the Church re- 
ceives into herself, through the communications of the Spirit, the 
life of Him whose characteristic features they set forth. 

These pictures originated spontaneously and (the first three, 
at all events) independently of each other. They arose, acci- 
dentally in a manner, from the four principal regions of the earth 
comprehended by the Church in the first century — Palestine, Asia 
Minor, Greece, Italy. 

The characteristics of these four regions have not failed to exer_ 
cise a certain influence upon the manner in which the Christ has 
been presented in the pictures intended for the use of each. In 
Palestine, Matthew proclaimed Jesus as Him who put the finishing- 
stroke to the establishing of that holy kingdom of God which had 
been fore-announced by the prophets, and of which the founda- 
tions had been laid in Israel. In Rome, Mark presented Him 
as the irresistible conqueror who founded His divine right to the 
possession of the world upon His miraculous power. Among the 



32 THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 

As the Gospels do not furnish us with a 
detailed narrative of all the events of the 



generous and affable Hellenic races, Luke described Him as the 
Divine philanthropist commissioned to carry out the work of divine 
grace and compassion toward the worst of sinners. In Asia Minor, 
that ancient cradle of theosophy, John pictured Him as the Word 
made flesh, the Eternal Life and Light, who had descended into 
the world of time. Thus it was under the influence of a profound 
sympathy with those about him that each evangelist brought into 
relief that aspect of Christ which answered most nearly to the ideal 
of His readers. 

But, on the other hand, each of the evangelists has also, by 
means of the picture which He has drawn, pronounced a judgment 
upon whatever was impure in the aspirations with which, in some 
respects, He sympathized. The spiritual and inspired Messianic 
idea presented by Matthew condemned that political and carnal 
view of the Church, which is the very soul of false Judaism. The 
sanctified and divine Romanism of Mark condemned the Csesarism 
of mere brute force. The heavenly Atticism of Luke took the 
place of the frivolous and corrupt Hellenism encountered by Paul 
at Athens. Lastly, humanitarianism — the divine humanitarianism 
of John — stands as an eternal witness against the humanitarianism, 
profane and anti-divine in its nature, of a world dazzled with its 
own greatness and lost in evil. 

Our Gospels are at once magnets to draw to themselves what- 
ever is left of divine in the depths of human nature, and, as it were, 
winnowing machines to lift out from it whatsoever is sinful. 
Hence the power both of attraction and repulsion which they exert 
upon the natural heart of man. 

It has sometimes been asked why, instead of the four Gospels, 
God did not cause a single one to be written in which all the 
events should have been arranged in their chronological order, and 
the history of Jesus portrayed with the accuracy of a legal docu- 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 33 

life of Christ, so in the Acts of the Apostles 
we have not a history of the Apostolic Church, 

ment. If the drawing up of the Gospels had been the work of 
human skill, it would no doubt have taken this form ; but it is just 
here that we seem to be able to lay a finger upon the altogether 
Divine Nature of the impulse which originated the work. 

Just as a gifted painter who wished to immortalize for a family 
the complete likeness of the father, who had been its glory, would 
avoid any attempt at combining in a single portrait the insignia 
of all the various offices he had filled, representing him in the 
same picture as a general and a magistrate, as man of science, 
and as father of a family, but would prefer to paint four distinct 
portraits, each of which should represent him in one of these char- 
acters — so has the Holy Spirit preserved for mankind the perfect 
likeness of Him who was its chosen representative. God in man 
used means to impress upon the minds of the writers whom He 
has made His organs four different images — the King of Israel 
(Matthew) ; the Saviour of the world (Luke); the Son, who as man 
mounts to the steps of the Divine throne (Mark) ; and the Son 
who descends into humanity to sanctify the world (John). 

The single object which is represented by these four aspects of 
the glory of Jesus Christ could not be presented to the minds of 
men in a single book ; it could not be so in the form under which 
it was originally embodied — that of a life ; first in the Church — 
that body of Christ which was destined to contain and display all 
the fullness which dwelt in the Head ; and then again in the person 
of each individual believer, if that is true which Jesus said : "Ye 
in Me, and I in you"; and we are each of us called to make the 
personality of Jesus live again in ourselves in all the rich harmony 
of His perfection. 

In the Church, then — in you, in me — we behold the living syn- 
thesis which were to be the result of that wonderful analyses of 
the person of Jesus Christ which produced our several Gospel nar- 
ratives. The harmony of the four Gospels is something better than 

2* 



34 THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 

but an account of the planting of the Church 
through the agency of the two great Apos- 
tles, St. Peter and St. Paul. The Epistles of 
the New Testament are not formal treatises 
on questions of doctrine and discipline, but 
letters written to churches throughout the 
world as the exigencies of the occasion de- 
manded, and are the expression of the voice 
of the Church through her recognized teach- 
ers on matters appertaining to Christian 
faith and practice.* The volume of reve- 

the best written book ; it is the new man to be formed in each 
believer. 

* Will any one ask how such contrasts could arise among writ- 
ers equally inspired ? The question itself shows how well the idea 
of inspiration has been understood in the Church, and what a 
transformation it will have to undergo. Just as the water with 
which we water the seed sown in the ground does not create the 
plant which grows out of it, but stimulates the development of 
the organs which had been previously found in the germ, and sets 
their power in action, so in the same way the Holy Spirit does not 
substitute Himself for the individuality of the sacred Author. He 
awakens his faculties, He groups his experience, He places him in 
immediate contact with salvation, and by that means confers upon 
him a special gift — the distinct intuition of that aspect of Gospel 
truth which answers most especially to his own character and 
needs. For, as M. Reuss admirably says, speaking of the differ- 
ence of the sacred writers, "The pole which attracted the mag- 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 35 

lation closes with the Book of the Revela- 
tion in which the future history of the Church 
to the end of time is disclosed, but in a way 
not to interfere with human liberty. The 
Bible, then, is no common book ; it deals 
with no common subject. It takes for granted 
a Church and people of God as existing in 
the world from the beginning to the end of 
time, and reveals to us the ways of God in 
His relation to them. Beyond this, the 
Bible saith not ; and no man, be he friend or 
enemy, has the right to quote it as an au- 
thority. 

netic needle of the sentiment, or of their intelligence, was not 
situated for all in the same point in the sphere of revelation." — 
Godet. 



II. 



FOR WHAT OBJECT WAS THE 
BIBLE WRITTEN? 



II. 



FOR WHAT OBJECT WAS THE 
BIBLE WRITTEN ? 




|0 this it may be answered, the word 
written was never intended to take the 



place of the w 7 ord preached. There is a 
Protestant Bibliolatry that is as bad in 
its way as Roman Mariolatry. When a man 
gives it as an excuse for not going to church, 
that he can stay at home and read his Bible, 
there is surely a monstrous delusion some- 
where. The ear as the instrument of hear- 
ing and obedience, not the eye, as the symbol 
of intelligence, is the organ of conversion. 
Preaching is of the very essence of Chris- 

39 



4<D THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 

tianity. Jesus conquers, not by the sword, 
but by the Word. His kingdom in the world 
is founded not upon force, but upon moral 
suasion. He will have willing disciples 
or he will have none. His first effort ever 
is to convince the reason and to enthrall the 
heart. It was for this reason that he went 
up and down the length and breadth of Judea, 
preaching everywhere the Gospel. He 
wrote nothing. Himself the truth, He spoke 
the truth to men, to win them to Himself, and 
to make them His disciples. He gave no 
commandment to His Apostles to write. They 
were to preach. The instrument of the 
spirit in working conviction in the minds and 
hearts of men was to be a man, a moral 
agent speaking as man to men, with author- 
ity, and filled with fire from on high. The 
Apostles were to preach, and as they preached 
they were to make disciples. It was not 
themselves they preached, but Christ and 
Him crucified. It is so now. Preaching is a 



FOR WHAT WAS THE BIBLE WRITTEN? 4 1 

divine ordinance. Nothing — not even the 
Bible — can take its place, as the instrument 
of the world's conversion. It is grossly to 
abuse and not to use the Bible, to put it in 
the place of the living instrument which God 
Himself in Christ has consecrated and 
ordained. The Bible is of infinite value, as 
a witness to Christ. It can never take the 
place of a moral agent sanctified and filled 
with the Spirit, in drawing men to Christ* 

But if the Bible cannot take the place 
of the living teacher, neither can it take the 
place of the faithful pastor and guide of 
souls. Quackery is not in our days con- 
fined to religion. There are book-makers 

* Christian preaching, as the living witness for Christ, as the 
living proclamation of the law and the Gospel, to awaken and 
strengthen faith, to build up the fellowship of the world, is not 
merely a spontaneous work of a private individual, not merely an 
arrangement made by the Church. It rests upon the command of 
Christ Himself. The command of Christ for preaching — " Go ye 
into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature" 
(Mark xvi. 15) — relates in the first instance to missionary work ; 
but the newly converted ever need new instruction and edifica- 
tion. "If ye continue in my word ('Edv vjueiS jusivTjre ev rep 
\6yop rep ijiicp ), then are ye My disciples indeed, and ye shall 



42 THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 

who, for the payment of a dollar, profess 
to make " every man his own doctor," 
" every man his own lawyer," and " every 
woman her own cook." Happily the world 
has not gone altogether after them ! There 
are people left who still believe that medi- 
cine encounters hinderances to its work- 
ing in the human subject besides mere physi- 
cal disease. There are moral conditions, 
peculiarities of temperament and of habit, 
which need the watchful eye and the con- 
stant care of a good physician. Cookery 
learned from a book is all very well for the 

know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." (John viii. 31.) 
And herein is clearly implied the appointment of preaching, as a per- 
manent and constituent part of Christian worship, just as we hear 
from the Apostle that the world has ordained " Pastors and Teach- 
ers" in His Church, for "the perfecting of the Saints, for the 
edifying of the body of Christ" (Eph. iv. 11, 12). It is not that 
they are merely speakers and hearers for mutual edification, who 
edify one another by the preaching of the Word ; it is the Lord 
Himself who builds up His Church by the means of grace. As 
the heaven-ascended Saviour, He is present with His word in the 
power of His spirit. He gives to the preaching its due authority 
and its proper unction; invisibly He works together with His preach- 
ers. " They went forth and preached everywhere, the Lord work' 
ingwith them?' (Mark xvi. 20). — Martensen. 



FOR WHAT WAS THE BIBLE WRITTEN? 43 

honeymoon, but it will not stand the wear 
and tear of ordinary life. So it is also in the 
affairs of the soul. Jesus gave command- 
ment to His Apostles, not to preach only, and 
make disciples in His Name ; they were to 
play the part of shepherds to the lambs ; 
were to feed His sheep. They were rightly 
to divide the word of truth, and give to each 
his portion of meat in due season. Babes 
must be fed on milk ; strong men want meat. 
The Bible takes for granted an order of men 
to dispense it. It was given to fix* the oral 
tradition of the Church, not to take the place 
of the fundamental institutions which Christ 
her Lord had Himself established. It would 
be as reasonable for a sick man to substitute 
the reading of a book for the taking of the 

* Neither hath He by speech only, but by writing also, instruct- 
ed and taught His Church. The cause of writing hath been to the 
end that things by him revealed unto the world might have the 
longer continuance, and the greater authority of assurance, by how 
« much that standeth on record hath, in both those respects, pre- 
eminence above that which passeth from hand to hand, and hath 
no pens but the tongues, no book b-ut the ears of men to record it. 
— Hooker. 



44 THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 

medicine which a regular physician pre- 
scribed, and expect a cure, as it is for a sinner 
to put the reading of God's Word in the place 
of the sacraments and the prescribed means 
of grace. 

We now reach the np&xov tpevdos, the 
prime fallacy, of modern criticism. If there 
be one truth to which the Bible bears witness 
more than another, it is that God has never 
left men to themselves, and to the state of 
nature, as it is called, to seek after Him, if 
haply they might find Him. Before man 
ever fell, if the Bible be true, God took man 
out of the state of nature and put him into 
a state of grace. When God made the 
world, He did not leave the world and man 
to Fortune or to blind Fate. He who made 
the world for man, prepared for man a special 
seat and habitation, where He revealed Him- 
self to man by the Angel of His presence, 
and entered into the communion with Him. 
The world was created to be the sphere of 



FOR WHAT WAS THE BIBLE WRITTEN? 45 

man's moral development. From the mo- 
ment that development began, God entered 
into history; and Himself took the direction 
of things into His own hands. He did it in 
a way, too, not to interfere with man's free 
will, and sense of personal responsibility. 
He bestowed His grace, not directly, but 
through sacramental channels, as in the 
tree of life. After creating things anew, 
He withdrew Himself and made men His 
ministers. If, through human weakness or 
frailty, His purpose was thwarted, or His 
hopes in selecting certain instruments disap- 
pointed; or His institutions through way- 
wardness or wickedness perverted, still He 
never abandoned the world in despair : He 
modified His plan ; He chose new in- 
struments ; He created new agencies ; He 
adapted His institutions to meet new exigen- 
cies. It has been so the ages all along for 
six thousand years ; it will be so, He prom- 
ises us, to the end. To all this, the Bible is 



46 THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 

the witness. It is for this we esteem it as 
more precious than gold of Ophir ; it is the 
book of books, in value and in importance, 
beyond all price. But how does modern 
criticism deal with it ? It would have us, 
first of all, reject, as of no value, the witness 
of the men who were most interested in pre- 
serving the Sacred Scriptures with scrupu- 
lous care and fidelity. It would have us be- 
lieve these men knew nothing about the real 
value of Holy Scriptures, or the true nature 
of their contents. We are to believe, accord- 
ing to Kalisch and others, that institutions 
were not founded when it is said they were, 
because they were not at once acknowledged, 
and in every detail recognized, according to 
their value. The law, as written in the 
Pentateuch, could not have been given, we 
are told with charming simplicity, because it 
was not kept. The Pentateuch must belong 
to a later age, because its provisions were not 
complied with, or fully carried out, until the 



FOR WHAT WAS THE BIBLE WRITTEN? 47 

time of the Babylonish captivity. Now 
what is all this but to deny the very princi- 
ple on which Divine Revelation goes from 
the beginning to the end ? It is to take a 
positive Gentile and heathen notion, and to 
substitute it for that which is its opposite, 
and then measure things accordingly. God 
indeed left the Gentiles to their own way ; 
He allowed them to develop as they could 
their religion out their own inner conscious- 
ness, to the end that they might, in time, 
come to the knowledge of their ignorance, 
and learn by experience their folly : but in 
the case of the Jews, He gave them their 
religion at the start. He planned for them 
their fundamental institutions ; and He did 
it with a view to educate them by presenting 
to them, from the outset, an ideal which 
He well knew they could never carry out in 
all its fullness, or hope to attain unto as a 
rule of life and conduct. Holy Scriptures 
themselves bear witness in every instance . to 



48 THE QUESTION OF THE DAY, 

this failure ; and they do so for the purpose 
of showing how the very shortcomings of 
God's ancient people were all the time bring- 
ing them nearer and nearer to Him who 
alone could fulfill the law in its integrity, and 
make it to be, not in the letter, but in the 
spirit, a rule of life. Holy Scripture, as 
Archbishop Trench in his Hulsean Lectures 
has well said, " is the history of men in 
a constitution — of men not seeking relations 
with God, but having them, and whose task 
is now to believe in them and to maintain 
them." If this be so, then the Bible is 
of no saving value without the Church. It 
was written for men " not seeking relations 
with God, but having them ; whose task it is 
now to believe in them and maintain them." 
It is one of the wonders of the world, how 
this fundamental truth should be written on 
every page of the Bible, from the beginning 
to the end, and yet so many never see it 
there or take it in so as to believe in it. 



III. 



HOW IS THE BIBLE TO BE 
READ ? 



III. 

HOW IS THE BIBLE TO BE 
READ? 




'T is to be read as one book, and can 
never be divided into two. Spiritual 



things are to be spiritually discerned. The 
Old Testament is the true and only key to the 
New. One or two illustrations will make 
our meaning plain. Modern science has 
discovered that there is an archetypal plan 
in nature. There is a general plan, and 
there are special adaptations* all the way 
through. Not only is the one not opposed 
to the other, but the one is to some extent 

* McCosh on "Typical Forms and Special Ends in Creation." 
Chap. II. 

51 



52 THE QUESTION OE THE DAY. 

the outcome of the other. The fin of the 
fish and the wing of the bird are the homo- 
logies of the arm of the man : each is 
adapted to do its work in its own peculiar 
sphere. Nature, so to speak, tried her 
u 'prentice hand " on the one before she 
attempted the other. The fish came first, 
the bird after, the man last, as the perfec- 
tion of all — the crown and glory of all 
created forms. So is it in the economy of 
grace. Eve, when Cain was born, thought 
she had brought forth the Redeemer of the 
world ; she cried in the simplicity of her 
faith : " I have gotten a man, the Lord." She 
believed in the promise, and was saved just 
as we are, by faith in the Lord Jesus ; but 
her faith needed to be educated, and she 
had to learn by sad and painful experience 
that the Redeemer is to come not in the 
way of nature, but is to be as Sethwas, " an- 
other seed," a gift of grace. Sarah learned 
the same lesson, but in another way. She 



HOW IS THE BIBLE TO BE READ? 53 

too had faith, although she laughed when 
the promise at first was given, when it was 
long in coming. She gave Hagar to Abra- 
ham, and had a slave-born child, if not the 
heir of promise. She was punished for her 
sin, but got the child of promise at last, if 
not in a natural, in a supernatural way. It 
is the old story of Eve, but in another fash- 
ion. Look at it again : Abel was killed out 
of pride by a brothers hand; Isaac, the child 
of hope long deferred, was given by his 
father a sacrifice over unto death. So in 
latter days, one was slain out of envy, and 
because his spirit of meek surrender was of 
more value in God's sight, than works done 
in a spirit of pride and self-conceit. He who 
was thus killed by wicked hands was given 
over by his father a willing sacrifice unto 
death ; and His seed has become as the 
stars of heaven for multitude. Is there 
any possible connection between one thing 
and another? Read the story of Joseph 



54 THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 

He was the child of Rachel, and came, 
like Isaac, after other experiments had 
been tried and failed, and was an answer to 
prayer, and a gift of grace. Joseph, too, was 
hated of his brethren, and was sold by them, 
and was given over unto death. But he 
came out of the pit, and was lifted from a 
prison to the throne, and was made lord over 
the whole land of Egypt ; and the command 
was given that every knee should bow be- 
fore him. It is the same fundamental type, 
but with variations and new adaptations. 
Can it have any reference to One who in 
after times was hated of his brethren, and was 
sold, and was taken from the pit and the 
prison-house to be lord and ruler over all, 
to whom every knee is to bow and every 
tongue confess that He is Lord to the 
glory of God the Father ? 

But we are in a new sphere, and a new 
order is round about us. The old covenant 
was established in a trinity of persons, who 



HOW IS THE BIBLE TO BE READ? 55 

held peculiar relations one to the other. 
Abraham was the high father, who through 
his only begotten and well beloved son, be- 
came, by faith, the father of many nations. 
Isaac was the incarnation of meekness, and 
obedience itself ; and Jacob was a supplanter 
and a wrestler with God, a builder of houses 
consecrated to worship, and the head of the 
twelve tribes of Israel. Is it more than possi- 
ble that we have foreshadowed here another 
and a better covenant ? Do we see the 
beginning of the adjustment of the relations 
of another Trinity ; have intimations given of 
another Wrestler and Supplanter ; note the 
coming of another Builder and Consecrator ; 
and are made to anticipate the Progenitor 
of another twelve and seventy, in ages yet to 
come ? And if so, why does God take this 
way of preparing the world's "gray fathers" 
for the advent of the world's Redeem- 
er ? The possible solution of the mystery is 
that these ancient patriarchs, in the simplicity 



56 THE QUESTION OF THE DAY, 

of their faith, and their feebleness of spirit- 
ual apprehension, were after all but beginners 
in a training-school. These pictures which 
* pass before us with all their wonderful sim- 
ilarity in diversity, repeating the story over 
and over again with adaptations and constant 
filling in, were after all like our own Kinder- 
garten object lessons, where sense apprehends 
by means of the eye, and touch, and use, 
the things which the logical faculty and 
the spiritual powers of the soul, when fully 
developed, are to grasp in the form of super- 
natural truth. Christ and His Church are 
the development and growth of the Old 
Testament and its history, just as man and 
nature are the growth of centuries, and were 
seen in archetypal light long before the 
world as it now is appeared. If it be the 
work of the true philosopher, as Lord Bacon 
says, to interpret nature, it is none the less 
the work of the theologian to trace the plan 
hidden in the Old Testament from stage to 



HOW IS THE BIBLE TO BE READ? 57 

stage, and show its completion and fulfillment 
in the New. It may safely be affirmed that 
no system of theology is worth a fig which 
does not accept as a fundamental maxim that 
spiritual things are to be spiritually discerned, 
and makes use of the things of the Old Tes- 
tament as object lessons, to unlock the mys- 
teries of the New. 

The Bible, to be read with profit, must be 
read in the order in which it is arranged in 
the Canon, and not according to any system 
of chronology, or natural selection. The law 
as given in the Pentateuch is the basis of the 
whole revelation, but it is not as the Samari- 
tans or the Sadducees held, the whole of reve- 
lation. The Law is supplemented by the 
Prophets as the objective by subjective, the 
factual (if we may be allowed the word) and 
institutional by the critical and the progress- 
ive. If we were to judge of the condition 
of any country by the morning papers, we 
should think the world was drawing near its 



58 THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 

close. The liberty of the press is a priceless 
heritage, although it does not always meas- 
ure with exactness of speech the evils it seeks 
to correct. So with the Prophets ; they were 
sent to enforce the great and all-important 
truth that God looks for more than outward 
service ; He expects purity of heart, as well as 
purity of hands and feet. No gift is of any 
value to Him where the giver is not one with 
the offering. Priest and king have no honor 
save as they represent Him, and use the 
power committed to them for the good of 
those for whom it was given. These are 
surely eternal, imperishable truths ; they are 
the truths which Wicklif and Hus preached 
in modern times ; but they are perverted 
when it is forgotten that it is against the 
abuse and not against the use of the things 
contained in the law they are directed. God 
cannot contradict Himself; what He doeth 
He doeth it forever. The Law, the Priest- 
hood, the Altar, Sacrificial Ordinances — 



HO W IS THE BIBLE TO BE READ? 59 

Kings, Judges, Rulers — are all the ordinance 
of God and are to be obeyed as His ; they are 
all, however, means to an end, and that end is 
one, though double in its working, viz., the 
good of the creature and the glory of the 
Creator.* 

The Hagiographa, in contradistinction to 
the law and the prophets, is mystical and spirit- 
ual in its application. Here the ordinary 
economic conditions which are of force in the 
earlier stages of the Divine life are swallowed 
up of the supernatural and the eternal. The 
mighty stream of the Church's devotional and 

* " While the calling of the priest seeks to realize the letter of the 
law, that of the prophet endeavors to realize its spirit. The proph- 
ets in general demand obedience to God's will as revealed in His 
laws, and are fond of emphasizing the pre-Mosaic and decalogue 
command respecting the observance of the Sabbath ; but Malachi's 
censure with reference to the malobservance of the sacrificial Torah 
(1. 10, etc.) stands absolute and alone. In every case the exhorta- 
tions of the prophets do not refer to the externals, but to the sub- 
stance of the law. They are zealous against the heartless and 
spiritless opus operatujn of dead works. With biting sarcasm they 
depreciate ceremonial observance and fasting (Hosea vi. 6 ; 
Jeremiah vii. 21-23 ; Joel ii. 13 ; Isaiah lviii). In brief the priest 
is the guardian of the external letter of the law, and the prophet of 
the internal, spiritual fulfillment." — Delitzsch. 



60 THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 

spiritual life broadens and ripens, until it 
embraces Gentile as well as Jew; and breaks 
away beyond the barriers of time, and space, 
and economic dispensation, carrying along 
with it all that is richest and best in the ex- 
perience of devout souls in every country 
and of every kind.* 

* " The tendency of the age of Solomon in relation to the tend- 
ency of that of David, may be compared to the tendency of Alex- 
andrian Judaism, in relation to that of the Palestinian. It is di- 
rected to the human, the ideal, and the universal elements in 
Israel's religion and history, and connects the essence of the Is- 
raelitish religion with the elements of truth in heathenism. As 
knowledge {gnosis) goes forth from faith {fiistis) so the age of 
Solomon is the new age of wisdom (chokmd) which has gone forth 
from David. While prophecy serves the process of redemptive 
history, chokma hastens before it and anticipates the universal 
ideas, through which the adaptation of the religion of Jehovah to 
become the religion of the world is recognized." — Delitzsch. 

To the same purport Godet says: " It is beyond dispute 
that, under the influence of the genius of Solomon, there grew 
up in his court a school of wisdom, or of moral philosophy, 
and that this phenomenon was in Israel a fact of an alto- 
gether new kind. Whilst the Levitical institutions performed 
their functions regularly, and the Mosaic ordinances were more 
and more impressing their stamp upon the life of the people, 
the leading minds, with the King Himself at their head, were feel- 
ing the necessity of searching more deeply into the knowledge of 
things, divine and human. Beneath the Israelite, they tried to 
find the man ; beneath the Mosaic system, that universal principle 
of the moral law, of which it is the perfect expression. Then they 



HOW IS THE BIBLE TO BE READ? 6 1 

If we would read the New Testament with 
profit, we must remember at the outset that 
the Gospel is to be sought for not in any one 
Gospel, but in all the four Gospels combined. 
We have four differing, but not contra- 
dictory, aspects of our Lord's life presented 
for consideration. We view the mystery of 
His Divine-human personality on all its four 
sides, as a complete manifestation of God- 
head, through the medium of humanity to 
the whole world. We see Him first, as the 
Jews thought about Him and looked for 
Him. We see Him again as the Romans 
received Him, not so much as a Teacher as 
an Actor, and the Founder of a universal 
kingdom in the world. We see Him again 

reached to that idea of wisdom which is the common feature of the 
three books, Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes. The Divine wisdom 
in the idea of which are included the notions of intelligence, jus- 
tice, and goodness, is personified as the supreme object of Divine 
love, and as the spirit which gives existence and order to the 
world ; this wisdom has marked with her stamp everything in the 
universe ; her delight is not in the Jews only, but in the children 
of men. To conform to her laws, is for man wisdom ; to act 
against them folly." 



62 THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 

in His relationship to the world at large, and 
to the outcast sinners of the Gentiles, the 
Seeker of the lost, and the Healer of the sick, 
and the Provider of an inn for the wayfarers 
spoiled and robbed by the wayside. Last of 
all, we see Him as the Eternal Archetype, 
the Light that lighteth every man that cometh 
into the world, taking humanity into union 
with Divinity, that He might, by entering 
into the conditions of time and mortality, fill 
it with the fullness of His own uncreated 
and eternal life. 

Like the Law in the old dispensation, the 
Gospel is only the beginning, not the end 
of all that Jesus began both to do and to 
teach. Here we see Him creating and call- 
ing into being things that were not. In the 
Acts of the Apostles we see Him from His 
eternal throne, operating in and through His 
Church ; and by virtue of the unction be- 
stowed upon Him in return for His finished 
works, doing greater works than any which 



HOW IS THE BIBLE TO BE READ? 63 

in His own Person He had done while here 
upon the earth. The Acts supplement the 
Gospels. Here we see fulfilled what was 
promised there. Jesus came not to make 
disciples only, but to found and establish 
a kingdom also. Now we see Him as a 
King upon His throne, and witness in the 
new spirit infused into the Apostles the 
secret of the power that has made the 
Church triumphant over the world. The 
Epistles are as many-sided as the Gospels. 
Here, Peter and John and James apply the 
lessons learned of Jesus in their familiar 
intercourse with Him for the guidance and 
instruction of the Church. Paul, as one born 
out of due time, arises to meet the wants 
of the Church when it overleaped the bound- 
aries of Jerusalem and the Holy Land, 
and began to embrace the Gentiles within 
its bosom. The whole is crowned with the 
Book of the Revelation where " the heaven 
which had disappeared from the earth 



64 THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 

since the third chapter of Genesis re-ap- 
pears again in visible manifestation. The 
tree of life, whereof there were but faint 
reminiscences all the intermediate time, 
again stands by the river of the water of life, 
and again there is no more curse. Even the 
very differences of the forms under which the 
heavenly kingdom re-appears are doubly 
characteristic, marking as they do not mere- 
ly all that is won back, but won back in a 
more glorious shape than that in which it 
was lost, because won back by the Son. It 
is no longer Paradise, but the New Jerusa- 
lem — no longer the Garden, but now the City 
of God, which is on earth. The change is 
full of meaning : no longer the garden, free, 
spontaneous, and unlabored, even as man's 
blessedness in the first estate of innocence 
would have been ; but the City, costlier in- 
deed, more stately, more glorious, but at the 
same time the result of toil, of labor, of 
pains — reared into a nobler and more abiding 



HOW IS THE BIBLE TO BE BEAD? 65 

habitation, yet with stones which, after the 
pattern of the 'elect corner stone/ were 
each, in its turn, laboriously hewn and pain- 
fully squared for the places which they fill." * 
It will be seen that the Bible is not only 
one book as the revelation of God's eternal 
plan, but is likewise a complete and organic 
whole in which part is dovetailed, by an all- 
pervading law of spiritual growth and devel- 
opment, into part. The Old Testament is 
the preparation for the New, and the New is 
the fulfilling of the Old. What if there be 
ten thousand times ten thousand various 
readings ; what if through " redactions " and 
adjustments for ecclesiastical purposes, parts 
have been transposed, or additions here and 
there made; what if St. Paul did not write 
the Epistle to the Hebrews ; let ingenuity 
and perverse criticism twist and turn things 
as they may, these are but scratches on the 
surface of a Book which, the more one reads 

* Trench. 



66 THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 

it, the more they stand amazed at its awful 
depth, and are at times ready to fall prostrate 
in the presence of the all-informing Spirit 
Who there reveals to those who have the eyes 
to see the workings of God's eternal plan. 

The Bible, moreover, is its own best inter- 
preter. One of the coming devises of the later 
criticism is to compare the Bible with other 
(so called) scriptures, and in this way try to 
rob it of everything like a peculiarly distinc- 
tive character. Lenormant furnishes us with 
" The Beginnings of History according to the 
Bible and the Traditions of Oriental Peoples 
from the Creation of Man to the Deluge," and 
another treats us to "The Sacred Scriptures 
of the World," etc., etc.* Now, it is to be 
granted that the Bible has much in common 
with other books, whether sacred or profane ; 
it is to be maintained, notwithstanding that 
the Bible is a book sui generis, and from the 

* See an able review of " Sacred Scriptures of the World," etc., 
in the Am. Lit. Churchman, for May I, 1883. 



HOW IS THE BIBLE TO BE READ? 6 J 

beginning to the end, follows a purpose and 
a plan peculiarly its own. Other books and 
other religions have accounts of the creation 
of the world, as well as the Bible ; but there 
is in the Biblical account a something which 
is not to be found in any. It was the 
universal belief of the ancient world that 
matter is eternal. The Bible, on the other 
hand, affirms that God called the matter of 
the world into being, as well as gave to every- 
thing that exists its peculiar form. The 
first chapter of Genesis and the first article 
of the Creed are in perfect harmony one 
with another. It is also peculiar to the 
Bible that it speaks of God as creating all 
things by His word, and through the in- 
breathing of His Holy Spirit. This is an 
idea that pervades all Holy Scriptures, and is 
as true of the New Creation in Christ Jesus, 
as it is of the Old Creation of which the first 
Adam was the crown. It is also peculiar to 
the Biblical story that the account of the nat- 



68 THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 

ural creation is only the introduction to a 
series of productions or origins, in which God 
appears, not as the Maker of the world only, 
but as a Person who lives and moves in his- 
tory, and holds personal communion and fel- 
lowship with the sons of men. The Book of 
Genesis is not, as its title would at first seem 
to indicate, a mere account of the creation 
of the world, but is made up of ten toledotks, 
or successions of creative acts in which God 
is represented as laying in the world the 
foundations of an eternal plan, which is to 
find its consummation at the last in the in- 
carnation of His own Eternal Son, and in the 
establishment of a kingdom that is to endure 
forever. It is not in vain, then, that the ac- 
count of the first creation is repeated in a 
second and supplementary chapter of this 
same book of Genesis. The heavens and 
the earth do not exist for themselves ; they 
were not intended only to display the glory 
of their Creator ; they were created to be the 



HOW IS THE BIBLE TO BE READ? 69 

sphere of the moral development of the hu- 
man race ; and of the union of God and man 
in connection with it. It is for this reason 
man made with a mere distinction of sex 
in the first chapter of Genesis, appears in the 
form of a twofold personality in the second. 
It is for the same reason Elohim, the sum 
and source of all power, the worlds great 
First Cause, is represented under a personal 
name, Jehovah, and condescends to talk with 
man as friend with friend, face to face. This 
idea of a twofold relationship of God to 
man, and of man to God, is an idea which 
runs throughout all Holy Scripture, from 
first to last, and is peculiar to itself. It is 
not to be accounted for by a theory like that 
of Astruc (known as the document-hypothe- 
sis), but by the fact that man on his earthly 
side is part and parcel of nature, and is gov- 
erned by the law of cause and effect ac- 
cordingly, while on his heavenly side he 
is, by the fact of his personality and free 



7<3 THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 

agency, lifted above all earthly powers, and 
made capable of entering into communion 
and fellowship with the eternal I am. The as- 
sertion, then, that in the twofold account of 
the creation, given in the first and second 
chapters of Genesis, we have one representa- 
tion, made up out of two separate and con- 
tradictory sets of documents (as asserted by 
the rationalistic school), is seen to be at vari- 
ance with the whole drift of Divine Revela- 
tion. The notion that any man, gifted with 
common sense, could deliberately sit down 
to compile a history from two sets of docu- 
ments at variance, one with the other, and 
call it a revelation from God, is simply too 
monstrous for rational belief, and yet it is this 
that we are asked to receive at the hands of 
the later criticism. 

Again we are told that every mythology 
has its golden age, just as the Bible has its 
story of Paradise and the age of innocence. 
There is enough in the statement to catch 



HOW IS THE BIBLE TO BE BEAD? *Jl 

the unwary, especially when served up with 
a show of learning about Kritayuga, "the 
age of perfection," and Dvparayuga, "the 
age of doubt/' and Kaliyuga, " the age of 
"perdition," as in the Aryan tradition. But 
the correspondence here, as elsewhere, is 
only on the surface. The Biblical idea of 
Paradise, as it appears in the Jehovistic 
account of the Creation, is essentially a sac- 
ramental idea, and not a state of nature at 
all. The Bible, in other words, represents 
the state of nature, described in the first 
chapter of the Book of Genesis, as a state 
not natural to man, but to the lower creat- 
ures ; out of which man was, was taken 
by a special act of grace, and was placed 
amid moral relationships, and was sur- 
rounded with sacramental signs and symbols 
which were intended to have an educational 
effect upon him. The lower creatures are 
allowed to have indiscriminate concubin- 
age one with another; man is not. The 



72 THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 

brute creation may eat of everything to 
the full ; man must place a restraint on 
appetite if he will raise himself to partici- 
pation in a higher life. It is from this point, 
history takes its start, and why? Because 
man in the state of nature has no history. 
He must subject himself to moral conditions 
before history can begin. History begins 
after the moral struggle which marks the 
epoch of the fall. Now all this again is 
peculiar to Holy Scriptures; it is part and 
parcel, moreover, of a class of ideas which 
have here their germ, and which continue 
to germinate and develop through all suc- 
ceeding dispensations to the close of the 
Book of Revelation. 

It will be seen, at a glance, that in 
this twofold account of the creation of man, 
and of the relation which God bears to him, 
in the one state or in the other, we have the 
foundation laid for the later division of the 
human family into Jews and Gentiles ; and 



HOW IS THE BIBLE TO BE READ? J$ 

the determination of the Divine relations 
accordingly. The Gentiles represent that 
portion of the race which fall away into the 
state of nature, and worship the powers of 
nature, and are debased as a consequence 
thereof ; the Jews are those who exist in a 
state of separation from the world, and 
worship, not the God of Nature, but the 
personal Jehovah, who manifests Himself by 
the angel of His presence to them. They 
abhor fornication, and keep with religious ex- 
actness the unity of the marriage bond (as 
an ideal at least) ; they perpetuate in the 
world the idea of a God who is separate 
from nature ; and Who speaks to men by the 
agency of His word, and educates them by 
the instrumentality of His Holy Spirit If 
it be true, then, that the Bible has some 
things in common with other religions, and 
with other books ; it is also true that it 
moves in a circle of ideas peculiarly its own. 
If we would read and study it aright, we 



74 THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 

must make it our aim, not so much to search 
out what it has in common with other Script- 
ures, but strive to grasp the ideas, which 
give to it its own peculiar character, and 
on which it founds its claims to be, as no 
other book can be, a revelation of God from 
Heaven. 

Among other attempts made at the present 
time to degrade thfe Bible and to rob it of its 
distinctive character, is one even more 
Jesuitical (for Rationalism has its Jesuits as 
well as Rome) than that to which attention 
has just been called. It is proposed to ex- 
purgate the Bible after the fashion of the 
ancient classics, as containing things which are 
offensive to polite ears, and positively hurtful 
to good morals. The proposition is as mon- 
strous as it is destructive of the very funda- 
mental idea of Divine Revelation. One great 
object for which Holy Scriptures were given 
was to bear witness against the world's sin. 
The Christian Church from the beginning has 



HOW IS THE BIBLE TO BE READ? 75 

used Holy Scriptures in three ways, chiefly. It 
has been her custom to read Holy Scripture 
publicly in the congregation, that she may 
thereby, in her prophetical character, bear 
continual witness against the world's sin. 
The Anglican Church, accordingly, does not 
permit her clergy to select what they shall 
read, lest they should cease to bear witness 
against prevailing forms of error ; but makes 
it her aim to read the whole Sacred Volume 
(as far as possible) through, year by year, in 
order that her children may have before them 
continually the whole counsel of God. In ad- 
dition to this, she has her liturgical or devo- 
tional use of Holy Scriptures in the office for 
the Holy Communion. The liturgical use 
for devotional purposes is no substitute for 
the prophetical as a witness against the 
world's sin, but is supplementary to it. Then, 
in the textual use of Scripture, we have the 
application of the substance of the Divine 
Revelation to the wants of the individual : 



J 6 THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 

an application still more extended in its 
homiletical or expository use. An expur- 
gated Bible means neither more nor less than 
an attempt to divide and kill the prophets, 
as they did of old time, lest they should any 
longer bear witness against the evil that is 
in the world. 

There are two vulgar errors continually 
to be met with (even among devout persons) 
in the reading of the Bible, against which, in 
conclusion, we would give a word of warn- 
ing. It is not the case that a text, or say- 
ing, or argument is inspired, because it is 
found in the Bible. Balaam was a false 
prophet, and he gave utterance to many ele- 
vated sentiments, as, for example/' let me die 
the death of the righteous, and let my last end 
be like his," but we are not on that account 
to think that all Balaam said and did was the 
result of Divine inspiration. The same is 
true of Job's friends; they were "miserable 
counsellors," albeit they spoke much that was 



HOW IS THE BIBLE TO BE READ? 77 

true, and good for Job to hear. It is no 
uncommon thing, it has been observed, for 
preachers to take a text, or quote in support 
of some doctrine, or some position, the 
words or the actions of men, simply because 
they occur in Scripture, treating all as equally 
inspired, because the book from which they 
quote is written by an inspired man ; or as 
the statement is commonly made, it is found 
in the inspired Word of God. Jeremy Tay- 
lor, in one of his most beautiful sermons, — 
that preached at the funeral of the Countess 
of Carberry, — takes for his text the words 
of the woman of Tekoah, 2 Sam. xiv. 14, 
which he uses throughout, as if they were the 
words of one speaking by the spirit of God. 
Perhaps no passage is more frequently used 
in this way than one spoken by the Pharisees 
against our Lord, and his Divine power, at 
a time when our Lord worked a miracle, and 
used a form of words in working it, for the 
very purpose of refuting the doctrine which 



j8 THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 

these words express. Our Lord in healing a 
certain paralytic, said, " Man, thy sins are 
forgiven thee." The Pharisees murmured 
at this, and exclaimed that such a form was 
blasphemy, for, " who can forgive sins but 
God only?" Our Lord replied, that He 
used that form purposely to show them that 
" the Son of Man hath power on earth to 
forgive sins." It is very common now to 
hear persons quote these words of the Phari- 
sees, to show that the Bible denies that Christ 
has given power to his ministers to pro- 
nounce absolution, or at least that they have 
power to forgive sins. Such persons might 
quote, as equally taught by the Bible, that 
our Lord was a Samaritan and had a devil, 
for it was the same persons, the Pharisees, 
that said it of him." St. Paul warns us that 
even among inspired men there are things 
spoken by " authority," and things which are 
spoken only in the way of advice.* In the 

* I Cor. vii, 25. 



HOW IS THE BIBLE TO BE READ? 79 

one case there is a law of perpetual obligation 
to be observed ; in the other the injunction 
was temporary, and given to meet "the 
present distress." 

Again in reading Holy Scriptures it is 
dangerous to trust to isolated texts. It is 
ever to be remembered, as well for the de- 
fence as for the confirmation of the faith, 
that it is the spirit, not the letter of Holy 
Scriptures that is to be our guide. We have 
a notable instance of this in the way the Old 
Testament is quoted in the New. There 
would seem in some cases to be a positive dis- 
regard of the letter, and that, too, with a view, 
it would seem, of preserving the spirit in the 
transfer of the passage from its application 
under the old economy to the things of the new 
dispensation. It matters really nothing, so far 
as the doctrine of the Trinity is concerned, 
whether (in i.Tim. iii. 16) the true rendering 
of the oldest MSS. be or ©. The faith of 
the Church does not depend upon such an 



8o THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 

uncertain issue as the carelessness of a scribe 
or the legibility of a manuscript. ,, Verbal 
criticism may do its work, and still no essen- 
tial dogma be imperiled or impinged upon. 
" Scripture interpretation, it has been said, 
should be comprehensive as well as exact 
and literal. We must weigh one part against 
another; we must give to each phrase its 
broader rather than its narrower meaning ; 
we must take the tenor of the faith for our 
guidance, if we would enter into the mind of 
the Spirit.' , 



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